Slashdot Mirror
Infamous French Hacker Calls Internet a "Digital Shantytown" (medium.com)
An anonymous reader writes: French hacker and security expert Anthony Zboralski calls social media networks a "digital shantytown" in his most recent blogpost. While fellow members of hacker collective w00w00 have formed successful billion dollar startups, he claims that the rewards for creating content and use are unfair and suggests a better solution would be like the successful creation of land title for slum dwellers — partial ownership for users on social media.
He recognizes that the value of social media is entirely created by the people who use it. Twitter, for example, has created basically nothing, or at the very least their contribution is negligible next to that of their user base. They just declared that they were a place to talk, and people showed up. The practical concern that creating a place to talk that can reach the entire world costs a pretty substantial amount of money still places Twitter's meaningful contribution to its own value very, very low compared to that of the users. The users create the content, and this guy believes that such creation should entitle them to a reward more substantial than gold star stickers. They should be able to make decisions about and profit from the platform they've made relevant.
Facebook has about one billion monthly active users, pretty much guaranteeing that your "share" or "stock" in Facebook will be all but meaningless.
Facebook is peripheral to the lives of its users, not central. You will never see the level of involvement that ownership demands. That is where the "shantytown" analogy breaks down completely.
The geek applauds the changes in Slashdot. That doesn't necessarily translate into enough money to keep the site from going on the auction block again. Someone has to pay the light bill --- and that someone, whether subscriber, advertiser, or charitable foundation will have the final say on how the site is managed.
Attention is a currency. Right now Facebook, Google and co are making fortunes by converting our attention to cash through advertising. All we get in exchange is being tolerated on their properties as long as we are willing to be fed crappy adverts. We're not even consumers, we're like serfs of the medieval ages.
As it stands, both merchants (ad-buyers) and peasants (consumers) are being screwed, and the nobility (Google, FB & co) takes it all.
The merchants buy ads with cash hoping it will translate to sales so they get their money back from peasants, but it's a perverse system where the merchant that spends the most in ads gets to push and sell its product - however crappy it is. If you can't pay enough cash to nobility, they make your life as a merchant very difficult. Peasants have it even worse as they end up giving both attention to ads for (mostly crappy) stuff *and* money to the merchants (of which a good chunks end up with the nobility). It's a vicious circle where both merchants and peasants are indentured to the nobility which has no incentive in figuring out a better way for everyone.
But what if we got payed for our attention? What if there was a marketplace where we could signal what we think has value for other people and get payed if we where right? Suddenly we would have a system where true value would be recognized and where people who helped point out that value (by giving it attention first) would be rewarded. This seems like a much better system for both merchants and peasants but, of course, not for the current nobility.
Maybe it's time for the revolt of the serfs...